BRADY’S PHOTOGRAPHS
Pictures of the Dead at Antietam
Antietam, Maryland, September 1862
Photographs by Alexander Gardner (in Brady team)
Library of Congress, Civil War Collection
The New York Times, 20 October 1862, p. 5 *
The living that throng Broadway care little perhaps
for the Dead at Antietam, but we fancy they would jostle
less carelessly down the great thoroughfare, saunter less
at their ease, were a few dripping bodies, fresh from the
field, laid along the pavement. There would be a
gathering up of skirts and a careful picking of way;
conversation would be less lively, and the general air of
pedestrians more subdued. As it is, the dead of the
battle-field come up to us very rarely, even in dreams.
We see the list in the morning paper at breakfast, but
dismiss its recollection with the coffee. There is a
confused mass of names, but they are all strangers; we
forget the horrible significance that dwells amid the
jumble of type. The roll we read is being called over in
Eternity, and pale, trembling lips are answering to it.
Shadowy fingers point from the page to a field where
even imagination is loth to follow. Each of these little
names that the printer struck off so lightly last night,
whistling over his work, and that we speak with a clip of
the tongue, represents a bleeding, mangled corpse. It is a
thunderbolt that will crash into some brain ⎯ a dull,
dead, remorseless weight that will fall upon some heart,
straining it to breaking. There is nothing very terrible to
us, however, in the list, though our sensations might be
different if the newspaper carrier left the names on the
battle-field and the bodies at our doors instead.
We recognize the battle-field as a reality, but it
stands as a remote one. It is like a funeral next door. The
crape on the bell-pull tells there is death in the house,
and in the close carriage that rolls away with muffled
wheels you know there rides a woman to whom the
world is very dark now. But you only see the mourners
in the last of the long line of carriages ⎯ they ride very
jollily and at their ease, smoking cigars in a furtive and
discursive manner, perhaps, and were it not for the black
gloves they wear, which the deceased was wise and
liberal enough to furnish, it might be a wedding for all
the world would know. It attracts your attention, but
does not enlist your sympathy. But it is very different
when the hearse stops at your own door, and the corpse
is carried out over your own threshold ⎯ you know
whether it is a wedding or a funeral then, without
looking at the color of gloves worn. Those who lose
*
A Confederate soldier who after being wounded had evidently
dragged himself to a little ravine on the hillside where he died
Federal buried, Confederate unburied, where they fell
Dead soldiers in ditch on the right wing where
Kimball's brigade fought so desperately
Photographs added for institute copy; no photographs published with 1862 review.
National Humanities Center. 2007 High School Summer Institute: The Unresolved Crisis: America, 1850-1870
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friends in battle know what battle-fields are, and our
Marylanders, with their door-yards strewed with the
dead and dying, and their houses turned into hospitals
for the wounded, know what battle-fields are.
Mr. BRADY has done something to bring home to us
the terrible reality and earnestness of war. If he has not
brought bodies and laid them in our door-yards and
along the streets, he has done something very like it. At
the door of his gallery hangs a little placard, “The Dead
of Antietam.” Crowds of people are constantly going up
the stairs; follow them, and you find them bending over
photographic views of that fearful battle-field, taken
immediately after the action. Of all objects of horror
one would think the battle-field should stand
preëminent, that it should bear away the palm of
repulsiveness. But, on the contrary, there is a terrible
fascination about it that draws one near these pictures,
and makes him loth to leave them. You will see hushed,
reverend groups standing around these weird copies of
carnage, bending down to look in the pale faces of the
dead, chained by the strange spell that dwells in dead
men’s eyes. It seems somewhat singular that the same
sun that looked down on the faces of the slain, blistering
them, blotting out from the bodies all semblance to
humanity, and hastening corruption should have thus
caught their features upon canvas, and given them
perpetuity for ever. But so it is.
These poor subjects could not give the sun sittings,
and they are taken as they fell, their poor hands
clutching the grass around them in spasms of pain, or
reaching out for a help which none gave. Union soldier
and Confederate, side by side, here they lie, the red light
of battle faded from their eyes but their lips set as when
they met in the last fierce charge which loosed their
souls and sent them grappling with each other and
battling to the very gates of Heaven. The ground
whereon they lie is torn by shot and shell, the grass is
trampled down by the tread of hot, hurrying feet, and
little rivulets that can scarcely be of water are trickling
along the earth like tears over a mother’s face. It is a
bleak, barren plain and above it bends an ashen sullen
sky; there is no friendly shade or shelter from the
noonday sun or the midnight dews; coldly and
unpityingly the stars will look down on them and
darkness will come with night to shut them in. But there
is a poetry in the scene that no green fields or smiling
landscapes can possess. Here lie men who had not
hesitated to seal and stamp their convictions with their
blood, ⎯ men who have flung themselves into the great
gulf of the unknown to teach the world that there are
truths dearer than life, wrongs and shames more to be
Antietam, Maryland, September 1862
Photographs by Alexander Gardner (in Brady team)
Library of Congress, Civil War Collection
Confederate soldiers as they fell
near the Burnside ridge (detail)
Bodies of dead, Louisiana Regiment
Bodies of Confederate dead gathered for burial (detail)
National Humanities Center. 2007 High School Summer Institute: The Unresolved Crisis: America, 1850-1870
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dreaded than death. And if there be on earth one spot
where the grass will grow greener than on another when
the next Summer comes, where the leaves of Autumn
will drop more lightly when they fall like a benediction
upon a work completed and a promise fulfilled, it is
these soldiers’ graves.
There is one side of the picture that the sun did not
catch, one phase that has escaped photographic skill. It
is the background of widows and orphans, torn from the
bosom of their natural protectors by the red remorseless
hand of battle, and thrown upon the fatherhood of God.
Homes have been made desolate, and the light of life in
thousands of hearts has been quenched forever. All of
this desolation imagination must paint ⎯ broken hearts
cannot be photographed.
These pictures have a terrible distinctness. By the
aid of the magnifying-glass, the very features of the
slain may be distinguished. We would scarce choose to
be in the gallery, when one of the women bending over
them should recognize a husband, a son, or a brother in
the still, lifeless lines of bodies, that lie ready for the
gaping trenches. For these trenches have a terror for a
woman’s heart, that goes far to outweigh all the others
that hover over the battle-field. How can a mother bear
to know that the boy whose slumbers she has cradled,
and whose head her bosom pillowed until the rolling
drum called him forth ⎯ whose poor, pale face, could
she reach it, should find the same pillow again ⎯
whose corpse should be strewn with the rarest flowers
that Spring brings or Summer leaves ⎯ when, but for
the privilege of touching that corpse, of kissing once
more the lips though white and cold, of smoothing back
the hair from the brow and cleansing it of blood stains,
she would give all the remaining years of life that
Heaven has allotted her ⎯ how can this mother bear to
know that in a shallow trench, hastily dug, rude hands
have thrown him. She would have handled the poor
corpse so tenderly, have prized the boon of caring for it
so dearly ⎯ yet, even the imperative office of hiding
the dead from sight has been done by those who thought
it trouble, and were only glad when their work ended.
Have heart, poor mother; grieve not without hope,
mourn not without consolation. This is not the last of
your boy.
Antietam, Maryland, September 1862
Photographs by Alexander Gardner (in Brady team)
Library of Congress, Civil War Collection
Confederate dead by a fence on the Hagerstown road (detail)
Battlefield near Sherrick's house where the 79th N.Y. Vols.
fought after they crossed the creek. Group of dead
Confederates (detail).
With pealing of trumpets and beating of drums,
These trenches shall open ⎯ the Son of Man comes.
And then is reserved for him that crown which only
heroes and martyrs are permitted to wear ⎯ a crown
brighter than bays, greener and more healing than
laurel.________________________________________
Federal buried, Confederate unburied, where they fell (detail)
National Humanities Center. 2007 High School Summer Institute: The Unresolved Crisis: America, 1850-1870
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